School committee to hold hearing

Robert Miller

Updated 9:36 pm, Tuesday, November 13, 2012

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What's to come
The Kindergarten-Grade 5 Facilities Committee will hold a public hearing on its work at 7:30 p.m. Monday at East Ridge Middle School, Ridgefield.
The committee will discuss which elementary school in town might best be closed. However, the Board of Education will decide if -- and when -- to close a school.

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RIDGEFIELD -- The school closing mill -- which has been grinding slowly, but steadily since 2009 -- is adding schools into its hopper.

"The difference between third and fourth place is very slight," Burgess said.

She said the committee compiled the list by looking at numerous factors -- how flexible the space in the town's schools is, the number of classrooms in each school, the number of parking places at each school, each school's potential for reuse and whether the school is served by natural gas lines.

The committee will listen to public comment and decide whether to revise any of its recommendations. It will then give its report to the Board of Education at its Nov. 26 meeting.

Burgess was emphatic that the committee's job does not involve actually closing a school. That job, she said, will be left to the full school board.

The school board has its own timetable for a school closing. The earliest it will happen is the 2014-15 school year, two years hence.

But to get to that point, the board has to hire a consulting firm to study how to redistrict six elementary schools into five. To stay on schedule, the board must vote on whether to close a school by year's end.

Driving the talk of a school closing is the town's dwindling student enrollment.

A report that consultant Hyung C. Chung gave to the school board in October repeated what the board has known for years: elementary school enrollment, which peaked at 2,579 students in 2002, has been declining steadily since then.

In 2011, enrollment was down to 2,194. Chung estimates that in 2014, the number will be 2,007; by 2015, he said, it will dip to 1,887.

The school board has set 2,000 students as a trigger point for a school closing.

By going from six schools to five, Superintendent Deborah Low has estimated the district could save $800,000 to $900,000 a year.

That money, Burgess said, could be used to pay for more and better programs -- money that's needed in an era of lean school budgets.

"Do you pay for bricks or do you pay for programs?" Burgess asked.

Austin Drukker, school board chairman, said unless the 2,000-student tipping point is reached, he won't support a school closing.

"It's 2,000, not 2,002," he said. "Right now the numbers aren't there."

And, Drukker said, the decision to close a school needs to take many things into consideration.

"It's not just a financial consideration," he said. "Everything has to fit."